Discover the step-by-step process of exporting from Revit to the Navisworks cache format (NWC) for use in Navisworks, including the importance of setting your coordinates to project internal and exporting the current view. The guide also shares insights into organizing file exports for easier navigation and optimal project organization.
Key Insights
- The article teaches the process of exporting from Revit to the NWC, which is similar to exporting to DWG. It requires a 3D view that highlights all components one wants to export, and hiding those not needed for export.
- The importance of distinguishing between files exported from Revit and native Navisworks created files is highlighted. One way to differentiate is by adding a lowercase 'x' after the title of the files exported from Revit.
- When working on more complex projects, it's often beneficial to separate and individually export the trades (such as electrical, mechanical, and plumbing). This separation aids in Navisworks clash detection, ensuring smoother project completion.
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Welcome back to the Navisworks video series. This is part three of our three-part importing and exporting series of videos. In this video, we'll be covering how to export from Revit to the NWC, which is the Navisworks cache format for use in Navisworks.
And we'll be using Revit, so if you don't have it open, open Revit right now. And we'll be starting out with the BIM361-ARC model. The process of exporting to NWC is a lot like the process of exporting to DWG.
You want to make sure that you have a 3D view that has all of the things that you don't want to export turned off and showing all the things that you do want to export turned on. Let's go to the Application button and select Export and then NWC. You'll notice in our Lesson 2 folder that we already have some NWC files, and we didn't actually create these files—Navisworks did this for us.
These are not the ones that we want to save from Revit, but when we saved the DWG files and then opened them in Navisworks, Navisworks automatically made these in the background. Let's check out some of our Navisworks settings. You'll want to make sure that your coordinates are set to Project Internal and that we're exporting the current view.
So to differentiate the files that we're exporting from Revit from the native Navisworks-created files, we're just going to supply a little lowercase "X" after our title so that we know it's BIM361-ARC-export.nwc, and hit Save. Once it's all exported, let's go back to Navisworks and we can check some of our work. So the file we're looking for is called BIM361-ARC-X.nwc, and we can see that this looks a lot like the original Revit file that we had Navisworks import in the part one video.
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It has all the shading that the Revit file had, and it also brought in the grid lines. If you go to the Selection Tree, you'll see that the file is organized by levels like the RVT file, not like the DWG file, and that the Saved Viewpoints have the Navisworks 3D view created as well. So you may be asking what the difference is between importing straight from Revit RVT and exporting to NWC for use in Navisworks, and we're going to go over that right now.
Let's go back to Revit and we'll open up the MEP file. When we opened up this RVT file in Navisworks the first time, we didn't have a choice of which views to import. Navisworks just went straight to the Navisworks view and imported everything, which includes all of our model information that is in this file.
This may not be a problem. Depending on which project you are working on, you may want to divide up all the trades—like having electrical separate from mechanical and separate from plumbing. If you have them separate, it helps with Navisworks Clash Detection.
So let's export each of these trades individually, starting with the electrical. We'll go to the Application button, Export, NWC, and this is electrical so this will be ELEC-X. Next, we'll export the mechanical information, and last the plumbing.
While we're in Revit, we can close this file by closing all the views, and we can open up the structural file and export the one view in that structural file. Once that's done exporting, let's go back to Navisworks. In the Home tab, go to Append, and let's append all of those new NWC files that we just made.
That's structural, plumbing, mechanical, electrical. With all the files imported, you can select each one of them, turn them on and off so that you can verify that they're in the correct position if you prefer. We can now set a proper Home view—say, at the front of the building—and then we can save this file.
Let's save it as BIM361-complete.nwf. Keep in mind that you can use any combination of file formats that you want to. If you prefer that your structural file be in the DWG format, you can simply export the structural only as DWG and leave the others as NWC. You can also part out the plumbing, mechanical, and electrical to NWC using this third method and then maybe import the architectural as RVT if you prefer.
The methods that you use should depend on the information that's included within the Revit files, the software that you have, and also the organization of layers that are included in each of the DWG or NWC file types. For the remainder of this course, we'll be exporting to NWC format, and this BIM361-complete file is going to become our master file.
That concludes the importing-exporting section of this course. I hope you enjoyed it, and I'll see you in the next videos.